This maybe an FAQ but here it goes: If I buy the complete NDK package, how do I add it to Aerodrums? I love the out-of-the-box drumkits, but I need a bit more variety. I love the NDK sounds and dynamics, but dont have a clue of how to add it to the current Aerodrums library.

Any pointers will be appreciated.By the way, thanks for a terrific product. For the first time in years I can play drums again at home, I have used it with small bands in rehearsals, and the other day I used it for the first time in a demo recording, and it worked perfectly well.

Great to hear that Gus. To answer your question, Aerodrums uses a subset of the NDK sample library that is encoded in our proprietary file format so it won't be possible to use the NDK samples directly. As far as I know the NDK package includes all samples as .wav files so you will be able to recreate all the elements of interest for use within Aerodrums by following the instructions here: http://aerodrums.com/manual/#making-new-drumsIf you have specific questions about this I'll be happy to help. Note that the Aerodrums samples went through some processing to reduce file sizes, etc. but you should be able to get fine results using the unprocessed samples.

If you're interested in more variety though I would recommend exploring the MIDI alternative. Companies like XLN Audio, FXpansion, Toontrack and many others have a huge amount of very high quality MIDI drum kits available that can be used directly in Aerodrums.

Thanks. I thought about the MIDI option as well. But I was assuming one of the things that make aerodrums have great dynamics is that its using the broad dynamic sample that is unique to NDK. So if use MIDI I would loose that broad dynamic range. Is my thinking accurate?

It may be true that the NDK has more samples per drum than the MIDI drum kit products but they still provide enough samples to make a great experience. There are two differences worth pointing out that are more important.

Firstly, the quietest hits in the NDK are extremely quiet while in some MIDI drum kits the quietest ghost hits can be quite audible. This means that very subtle stick movements in Aerodrums can produce a lot of audible hits in the MIDI kits but not in the NDK. This can be solved however by setting up filtering in Aerodrums so prevent MIDI notes being sent for very low velocity hits.

Secondly, unlike most MIDI kits, the NDK has separate samples for the left hand hits and the right hand hits. In Aerodrums, we know which is the left hand and which is the right so we can trigger the appropriate samples. This feels much better than simply round-robining between samples which is what is generally done when playing on an electronic drum kit.

XLN Audio amongst others have demo versions of the their software available to download, e.g.:http://www.xlnaudio.com/demosI recommend trying some of these to see what you think.